The Truth Beneath

Kim Jong-chan is standing for parliament and the election is two weeks away. On the busiest day of the campaign his fifteen-year-old daughter Min-jin disappears. His wife Yeon-hong starts looking. Her husband chooses to keep campaigning; news of a disappearance could cost votes. Yeon-hong goes alone to the school, the friends, the phone records, and realises she knows nothing about her daughter's life. Lee Kyoung-mi wrote the screenplay with Park Chan-wook and Jeong Seo-kyeong. The narrative ties an investigation into a disappearance to the unravelling of the mother; as Yeon-hong pushes on, both her method and her appearance come apart, and the film gives up trying to keep her sympathetic. Son Ye-jin plays Yeon-hong, in one of the harshest roles of her career. Kim Joo-hyuk plays the husband. Who it's for: Viewers who like Korean thrillers, investigations centred on a mother, and films that push at genre boundaries. Who it's not for: The narrative is deliberately tangled and some connections are never explained. The violence in the final section is also harsh.